


The Spaces in Between

by bazemayonnaise



Category: Tenet (2020)
Genre: Competence Kink, Domestic Fluff, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Queerplatonic Relationships, Threesome - M/M/M, not beta read we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26241733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bazemayonnaise/pseuds/bazemayonnaise
Summary: When they meet again, they have their work cut out for them.“Of all the names, Neil.”““You can hardly be ‘my loving husband the Protagonist’,” Neil says as they follow Mahir through to the room they’ve been using as their base of operations.
Relationships: Neil/The Protagonist (Tenet), Neil/The Protagonist/Mahir
Comments: 8
Kudos: 117





	The Spaces in Between

When they meet again, they have their work cut out for them.

The future isn’t easy, even if they’ve dabbled in its past. He refuses to bring Kat back in, not while Max is still getting used to having his mother back, and without Priya, their network begins and ends with Mahir.

They send messages further and further back into the past until they own the deeds to a house in the countryside, an empty and abandoned mansion with more space than they can shake a stick at; perfect for renovation into a training base.

It’s taking some elbow grease to strip it of its mouldy wallpaper, especially since they can’t trust local help not to put something on the books and they’ve had two weeks of camping next to the fireplace in the drafty visiting room, but it’s a nice change of pace, doing some home renovation after crashing a jumbo jet into an art warehouse. 

The Protagonist feels more at home in paint-splattered shirts than tailored suits, the builder's wear comfortable against his skin and more human than the artificial, straight-spined brace of starched white shirts.

And, even better, their new home is so far out into the countryside they’ve not got neighbours for  _ miles- _

When the doorbell goes off, all three of them silence instantly. They lower their cans of paint and rollers, unholstering their ready weapons. Mahir and Neil look to him and he signs instructions at them, following the pair as they wind their way through the house. Mahir breaks off to flank the front door, and Neil ducks behind a thick cabinet while the Protagonist unlocks it. 

The Protagonist keeps his gun arm behind his back as he cracks the door open, waits a moment for open fire, then pops his head around. 

A couple, white, old, dressed to the nines. “Morning!” the man greets, smile unfaltering as he holds a thick hand out. “So you’re the fools who’ve bought the old ‘Fixer Upper’, eh!”

The Protagonist smiles, waving the gun behind his back until he feels Neil come up behind him, deftly taking the Protagonist’s gun as he pretends to slip an arm around his waist so the Protagonist is free to hold the hand out for a handshake. “Neighbours,” he says. “I didn’t realise we had any!”

“Ooh, an American!” the wife says, moving forward to exchange a peck on the cheek with the Protagonist, then Neil. “I’m Betty, this is my Roger. No shame in not having seen us, we’re just over that ridge. Ours is just out of site from the road!”

“Charles,” Neil greets as the Protagonist kicks himself for not having spotted a goddamn neighbouring house. “Bailey,” Neil chastises, ramping his annunciation up to a hundred. “I told you we should have started in the living room. I’m so sorry, we would invite you in, but my husband was absolutely adamant that we work top down, ‘start with the bedrooms’, he said, and now we don’t have a single place for our guests to sit.”

“Oh, no, please, dears, don’t mind us. We’d have come knocking sooner, but we didn’t notice your old chimney working until last night! Fancy that! We bet you’d not got a thing knocking around in that kitchen of yours, so we brought you something of a care package.”

The Protagonist feels Neil tense the moment they both notice the box piled behind the couple on the doorstep. Big enough to hide enough explosives to level the estate, for sure, and two tote bags worth of listening devices hidden under produce resting on top.

“Oh, no, we couldn’t,” the Protagonist feels himself say as he catches sight of Mahir behind the couple. Mahir has a screen out, points a detecting device towards the box. 

“That’s incredibly kind of you to offer,” Neil tries, charming as ever, “But we  _ just  _ got the shopping in.”

“Nonsense!” Roger dismisses, Betty finishing with a “Two big boys like yourselves!”

“Three,” Mahir says from behind them, electronics disappeared into his cargo trousers and hand already out for a brisk shake of Roger’s hand. “Danni. Nice to meet you.”

“Oh!” Betty says, rolling through her shock like a champ. “Nice to meet you, Danni,” she says, bright eyes looking between the three of them and attempting to do some intense calculations.

“Friend,” Mahir explains, stepping between them to heft the box that’s been left there. “Helping these twats move into their mid-life crisis. Thanks for the veg, they’ve been force-feeding me dry carbs for a week.”

Mahir barges his way through the Protagonist and Neil, making use of Neil’s exaggerated fuss over the accusation over their eating habits to signal to the Protagonist that he’s going to double check in the safety of the kitchen but that he thinks the packages are clear. 

“It’s  _ so  _ good of you to check in on us like this,” Neil says in an endlessly  _ British  _ tone, and Roger and Betty take an immediate half-step back, getting the signal. 

“No, no, no problem at all!” Roger says.

“Now listen, we mustn’t keep you!” Betty adds. They exchange a final round of niceties, and then the pair are disappearing down the driveway.

“Of all the names, Neil.”

““You can hardly be ‘my loving husband the Protagonist’,” Neil says as they follow Mahir through to the room they’ve been using as their base of operations.

“Bailey? That was top of the list? Tip of the tongue?  _ Bailey? _ ”

“Actually,” Neil says, dumping himself on the one clean sofa in the room, “I intended to use Chad, but I feared you might stab me.”

“Chad?” the Protagonist says in disbelief, dropping the shopping bags on the counter. “ _ Really _ ?”

“Thought you’d make an excellent Football coach, but alas. Next time, dear.”

“You call me Chad and I’ll divorce you.”

“Bruce, then. Bruce the Baseball player. ‘Oh I knew I had to have him the moment I saw him on the field. Top of the ninth, bases loaded, two outs…’” Neil plumps up a rock-hard, moth-eaten cushion and props it behind his head before swinging an imaginary bat, making a popping sound. “Three run homer, the crowd went wild! Ahhhhhh!!!”

“You’ve never watched a game, have you.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I’m telling them you’re a live-in poet,” the Protagonist says, sorting their groceries into perishable- and non-perishable piles. “Hasn’t had anything published for more than a decade.”

“You say that like a threat.”

“Is it not?”

“I’m going to pretend I think I’m a vampire,” Neil says, inspecting his nails. “Really ramp up the dishevelled, effeminate queer. Do you think pretending to see movement in the wallpaper is a bit much?”

“It’s all right for some,” Mahir sighs, rooting through the box he’d cleared and pulling out a bottle of wine, inspecting it like he’s looking at a master forgery. “Huh, they gave us the good stuff. Bet they’re regretting it now they’ve seen us.”

“All right for some?” the Protagonist prompts.

“Your  _ husband  _ was about to call me the pool boy, I could smell it.”

“I was going to say third,  _ actually _ .” 

“Like I say, lucky for some.” Mahir uncorks the wine, taking a drag straight from the bottle. 

“Aw,” Neil says, completely unsympathetically. “You can be my legal husband next time, Mahir, you just have to ask.”

“I’d prefer pool boy,” Mahir says, inspecting the other bottles. “Couple thousand quid worth of wine here.”

“How luxurious,” the Protagonist says. “Shame we can’t bring it with us.”

“Where?”

“We’ve got neighbours, Neil, we should burn this shit down before they get a better look at our faces.”

“We just got here,” Neil argues, “After putting all that work in.”

“We should go somewhere more remote. Canada, maybe. Somewhere in South East Asia.”

“I think we should stay.” Neil and the Protagonist turn to Mahir as one. “Look, it’s good we don’t have a paper trail, any kind of trail. I agree with you there. But Bailey, Charles and Danni, I reckon we’d do good to have something real behind us. Something fake people think they can close in on. Arms dealers or whatever, like Priya’s husband.”

“Smokescreen,” the Protagonist says, considering it. “They won’t believe it unless we live here, properly. It’ll be long-game stuff.”

“Yeah,” Mahir agrees. “Won’t be able to let our guard down, either. Should feel real. Should be real, all the way up to the fact it’s not.”

“Hm,” the Protagonist considers. “I suppose there are worse plans.”

“Should I be offended?” Neil asks, rolling onto his stomach and holding his hand out to the Protagonist. “You’d better buy me a big rock, Bay.”

“You are not calling me ‘Bay’.”

“It’s going to be a long marriage,” Mahir sighs, taking his bottle and heading back to the room they’d been painting.

-

They’d decided on a wedding in India, just the right amount of exotification a couple of their income would partake in, and they find enough off-season actors, tourists and locals to fill their photos with cheering faces, cash-in-hand.

Mahir is their best man and, to cover some future bases they carve some time out to hire separate photographers to take blackmail photos of both grooms fucking, or getting fucked by Mahir; Neil keeping it classy in an alleyway, the Protagonist caught in Mahir’s hotel room, the one adjoining the happy couple’s. 

They get all of the photos printed in separate shops, admire their local paparazzi’s work together in the honeymoon suite bed, then separate the photos into different envelopes for later use.

-

The Protagonist has had to kiss colleagues on jobs before. It’s not an uncommon tag-team tactic, platonic and rarely more than a careful display of either affection or of the ball-and-chain of heteronormativity. He’s had to feign interest in marks, too, so he’s beyond confused at how  _ wrong  _ it feels to pose like this, with Neil. 

It’s easy to kiss Mahir, to catch him watching and to ‘practise’ intimacy until it becomes a habit, lips a familiar passing. He likes Mahir, finds the man friendly, intelligent, they get along well and have good conversations. In another life, the Protagonist can see himself settling in with him, either as roommates, or friends, or as what they are now. Can see them falling into a comfortable, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ routine. 

They share a bed, sometimes, but have separate rooms. They don’t talk much, especially not about their lives before they were Mahir and the Protagonist, but they do talk about their mutual love of gameshow TV, spending long nights watching each other’s favourite shows in bed, pirated to Youtube and auto playing until they passed out. 

It’s harder to kiss Neil. They’re doing a dance, of sorts, and they’re always so busy they can find every excuse to put off having the conversation. Because it had been fine, what the three of them had, a platonic business agreement to be used as a cover-story that had had the added benefit of being enjoyable, until the Protagonist had met Neil’s eye, one night, out on the front porch, and had known that there was a lot more, there. 

Mahir spends just as much time with Neil as the Protagonist does; and most nights they conk out together, feeling safer in military-bunks on the ground floor than in wide-open bedrooms designed for people who have lived far safer lives than they have. 

Neil’s been teaching Mahir how to chop vegetables properly because the man’s apparently been living his life so far on packet ramen and a prayer, and Mahir has been paying for the lessons by teaching an increasingly frustrated Neil how to pick out a tune on the grand piano. 

Neil and the Protagonist had shared a particularly loaded look when they’d watched Mahir on his back, under the piano, tinkering with the instrument as he re-tuned it for them, fingers deft and sure as he worked.

And then, after six months building this life together, rarely talking to anyone but each other and the friends they’re attempting to make in the nearby village, Mahir takes a job on the other side of the world. “Gotta keep up the reputation,” he says as he packs a bag, then pats them both on the cheek in an affectionate goodbye. “Don’t burn the place down while I’m away. Have the scary conversation. See you when I’m back. Go team.”

Neil and the Protagonist share a laugh at Mahir’s attempt at faux-team building enthusiasm, then keep laughing as they sit back on Mahir’s empty bed.

“So,” Neil says, “I like you more than is appropriate for a colleague.”

“Yeah,” the Protagonist agrees.

“We’ve got to dedicate our lives to helping our past-selves stopping World War III.”

“Yep.”

“We can’t afford to let our personal feelings get in the way of temporal disaster.”

“Yeah.”

“I love you anyway,” Neil says.

“Yeah.” The Protagonist runs a hand through his beard, combing through the coils. “To be fair, I fucked up from personal feelings before, and we’re still alive.”

“Post hoc ergo propter hoc.”

“Bless you.”

“Correlation isn’t causation.”

“Sure,” the Protagonist says. “But, counter-argument.”

“Mm?”

“I’m the Protagonist, and the Protagonist gets the girl, that’s cinema 101.”

“Bit misogynistic,” Neil says, but his body language is relaxing, shoulders untensing from where they’d been hunching, ready for a heavy rejection. “I trust you,” Neil says. “I trust you with this.”

“No pressure,” the Protagonist jokes, but he takes Neil’s hand, weaving their fingers together. “I trust you too. I trust you to tell me when I’m about to fuck up.”

“You’ll ignore me anyway.”

“Probably,” the Protagonist admits with a grin. “But I trust you to catch me after, too.”

“One day I won’t.”

“Then that’s what happens that day.” The Protagonist lets the thought breathe. “Mahir,” he asks.

“Yeah,” Neil agrees, “I’d like to include him too, if he’s interested.”

“What  _ will  _ the neighbours think,” the Protagonist says in his best Neil-impression.

“Silly,” Neil says, but he’s leaning in, pressing into the Protagonist’s space, kissing him the way the Protagonist has wanted him to ever since they’d found each other again, when the Protagonist had thought there was no future-Neil, only a limited middle-ground of past-him, a snapshot leading up to an inevitable death.

This kiss isn’t easy, either, it almost hurts, how fragile it feels. But it’s here, it’s happening, and the Protagonist won’t waste every moment they have together.

-

The house is a goddamn mess when Mahir returns. The kitchen doesn’t have a single clean plate, despite their inheriting an entire estate’s worth of tableware, and he’s pretty sure the fridge has started its own ecosystem. 

But can hear laughter, and faint music, and the thudding of bumbling steps from one of the entertaining rooms. He follows the sound to the grand piano, where Neil is picking out a simple tune as he watches the Protagonist dance, hands around an imagined partner, spinning around the room in a mimicry of a period dance.

The Protagonist’s eyes are sparkling as he spins, and Neil is so transfixed by him that he doesn’t notice Mahir’s approach until he’s pushing Neil off of the piano stool, immediately replacing the simple melody with something they can really dance to. 

Neil takes the offer with a bright smile and an elated “Mahir! You’re home!”, even as Neil falls into the Protagonist’s arms. 

“One song, then you’re scrubbing the kitchen floor to ceiling,” he warns. “And if you’ve fucked with my room, I’m booking the first flight back.”

“We missed you too,” the Protagonist says, one hand coming to clasp Neil’s, the other resting on the small of Neil’s back. It’s obvious neither of them know how to dance, so they end up just sort of rocking like that, occasionally throwing in a couple of things they’ve half-learnt from a film, and Mahir ends up giving them five songs and a primer on basic dance moves.

They never quite forget that they have a job to do, but they make the goddamn most of the lives they’re given, the lives they’re forging, and they savour every moment of happiness they can.

**Author's Note:**

> *intends to write something short and domestic for Neil/Protag, ends up writing a vaguely plotty polyam*
> 
> [Bazemayonnaise on Tumblr](https://bazemayonnaise.tumblr.com)


End file.
